


The Absence in His Wake

by arcapelago (arcanewinter)



Series: A Measure of Peace [3]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Airplane Sex, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:16:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1912332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanewinter/pseuds/arcapelago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Charles and Erik first met, Erik's frequent nightmares could only be calmed by Charles' closeness, and it led to a habitual intimacy Charles couldn't acknowledge until the end.  Ten years later, reunited on the plane to Paris, Charles feels ashamed for his inaction--and shame only reminds him of what used to come with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence in His Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to spifty for the encouragement and CLS for the green light. ♥

"You look tired," Charles said, midway through their game, partly because it did not feel like Erik had, in fact, gone easy on him, and partly because every so often Erik's eyelids would droop and he would take another sip of his drink to wake up again. "Shall we leave the game for now?"

Of course, there wouldn't be time to return to it if they left off now. It would become their second unfinished game, the first of which he'd only disturbed twenty-four hours ago when he packed it along with a change of clothes purchased for a man whose measurements he remembered by touch and too well. This game wouldn't become that relic. It was on a plane to Paris, not enshrined in the tomb of his home.

At first Erik shook his head, but as his eyes lingered on the pieces on the board they lost their focus again. He slowly sat back. "I feel like I've slept for years." He looked into his glass, now empty, and set it aside. "Yet I never knew rest."

Charles' glass was empty half an hour ago. He had struggled to leave it that way, and his dry mouth wished it again to be full. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," he said. "I'm sorry I left you with your--"

He didn't say the word. Logan was asleep in his chair across the cabin and Hank was behind the cockpit door but it didn't feel right to say it. Erik's nightmares--the closeness that had subdued them--Charles couldn't openly speak of it then, and if anything it was buried a hundred feet deeper now.

But Erik knew what he'd meant. He smiled mutedly, an even more mirthless expression than before his imprisonment. "It wasn't anything I hadn't dealt with before you." His eyes drifted over Charles' face like he was remembering the difference Charles had made before he closed them and smirked wearily. "Besides, it wasn't as though I could do any damage to my surroundings."

"No," conceded Charles, watching him with a familiar ache in his heart. "Only yourself."

Erik met his eyes briefly, a piercing gaze he so rarely softened, before he rose to his feet. "I was the one who left you."

Charles watched him turn and step toward the small sofa, surer on his feet in the small airborne space than the rest of them. Charles had spent a great deal of time, wasted time, wondering who had left whom, who had pushed whom away. Erik had told him just hours ago that he hadn't fought hard enough. It had hurt like it did only because Charles had known it already. Not wanting the same thing hadn't necessarily meant what it came to mean. Perhaps he'd assumed that once things settled, once he wasn't in so much pain, once emotions were not so violently fraught, they could come together again to discuss more rationally how their partnership could work despite their differences.

Of course, that never happened. Charles had learned the damage to his spine was permanent, and in the following months he let Erik, and Raven, remain severed from him too. He hadn't fought hard enough. He hadn't fought at all.

Erik sat down on the sofa. For a moment he remained with his forearms on his knees, gaze settled heavy-lidded on the floor. Charles wondered if he might not fall asleep right there before he spoke.

"Will you lie down with me?"

Charles sat straight in his seat and glanced to Logan, but he hadn't stirred. Reluctantly he looked back to Erik, whose eyes were still downcast. He pursed his lips, once again having to admit the pinnacle of his failures. "I can't help you now. My powers--"

"--Are not what I'm asking for."

Erik finally turned his head, still resting forward on his arms. He looked weary, but without expectation, not even when a humbled, heart-sick Charles found himself rising to his feet and taking uncertain steps toward him.

"There's not room," he said, hoarsely, though of course it had never stopped them before. "But I'll be near."

Looking up at him, Erik blinked slowly as though in gratitude before he turned and lay down on his back, head on the arm of the sofa, hands folded on his stomach. His eyes followed Charles as Charles reached up to dim the lights above him. The overhead lights elsewhere in the cabin kept the scene from straying too close to memory.

Erik's eyes were starting to close. Charles turned and sat on the floor, legs out in front of him with his back against the sofa by Erik's side. Erik was close to its edge, so close that Charles could feel the heat of him mingling gently with the hair at the back of his neck. He realized he, too, was tired, but he wouldn't drift any closer to him to rest his head.

Instead he sat with a rigid back, eyes forward, feeling utterly blind of him where his mind would normally have known his every movement. Now he listened. Now he strained to hear Erik's breathing, hear the faint slip of the upholstery against his clothes, but the roar of the jet engines made it impossible to do more than imagine these things.

Still, there was no mistaking the careful drape of Erik's arm from the edge of the sofa. Erik's hand twitched nervously beside Charles only briefly before slipping across Charles' chest while Charles' heart tripped and stopped his breath beneath it. Erik's hand found his shoulder and grasped it, and the weight of his arm rested across him, a comfort, a chain, a bond, a scythe.

Breath skittering beneath it, Charles lifted his hands to grip his arm, feeling the tenseness in the muscle, the warmth, the urgency. He didn't want to pull it away but to press it closer. He needed this nearness. Much as it shamed and confused him countless nights on that distant road to find others like them, to stop Shaw, he was hopelessly starved for it now, especially when his mind was cut off and safely locked in his own skull.

He turned his head to bury his face in Erik's arm beneath the shoulder, drawing in the scent of him and feeling himself shudder with weakness. He felt like his eyes hadn't fully dried since the doors to the lift had opened. His drunken haze had kept him numb and whole until then: ever since, he'd been on the verge of breaking open and spilling out. Everything tore at him. He was angry at an old injury whose price he'd keep paying, one way or another. He was guilty for leaving Erik in prison, for turning his back on his kind. He was drowning in the knowledge that Erik was no longer the man he used to know when he _missed_ that man so destructively, so desperately. And yet here he was, asking for Charles to be near him, holding on to him, letting Charles cling to him even though Charles had been wrong about _everything_.

He needed a drink. He needed a drink or he was truly going to lose it. But though he pulled himself away and stood he only got as far as his hands on the luggage rack to steady himself. He could go no further. For Christ's sake, he was going to weep.

He heard the shift of Erik's weight behind him and wished he could have silently beseeched him to stay where he was. Instead there was no escaping Erik's firm grip on his hips, deftly turning his body to face him.

He kept one hand on the luggage rack for balance, refusing to rely on rock-steady Erik. His gaze remained cast down the length of the cabin, his other hand roughly wiping across his eyes, but that seemed to be no use at all, especially when Erik was hardly six inches away, scrutinizing him, filling Charles' lungs with the scent of him, warming his skin with the heat of him.

He finally turned his head to face him, not out of bravery, but out of spite. He knew what he looked like, the red in his eyes, the unkempt beard, the hair that hadn't been cut in years. He was a disaster, especially at that moment. _This is what you've done to me_ , he thought. _Not just you, but you all the same._

Erik met his eyes, reflecting none of the shame. His gaze drifted, taking in perhaps all of the changes of the past ten years, but what he thought of them his face didn't show. His hands were still holding onto Charles' hips.

Finally his eyes returned to Charles'. _Say something,_ Charles thought. _Tell me I'm a disappointment. Tell me I'm a drunk and a failure._

Erik frowned, finally.

"You take the sofa, then," he said.

Charles laughed incredulously. "I don't--" He stopped himself, realizing he was almost shouting. "I don't want the damned sofa," he said, a harsh whisper whose breath he knew Erik could feel against his mouth. The plane shuddered faintly--turbulence, or something else--and Erik held onto him more tightly, sending the same shudder into him.

"What, then?" asked Erik.

Charles' grip tightened on the luggage rack, sending a pulse of strength through him to the floor. He pushed back against the rack to take Erik's _obtuse, arrogant_ mouth with his, but maddeningly Erik swayed out of his touch just long enough to deter him.

"He's not really asleep," Erik murmured, though he spared no glance to Logan, still reclined in his chair.

Charles did, briefly.

"That's his own damn fault," he muttered, closing his free hand on the back of Erik's neck and pulling him in to kiss him. He felt Erik's surprise ripple through him, purely physically, but when he didn't pull away this time he pressed Erik's mouth open to taste him.

 _God help him_ he tasted like alcohol, and Charles' body responded to it, hooked by his addiction and letting one hunger fuse with another. He let go of the luggage rack and forced Erik to support his unsteadiness, wrapping his arm around his back and only barely allowing Erik to breathe his own air.

Erik was panting lightly when Charles eased his teeth over Erik's lower lip and released it. He'd pressed his hips forward into their center of balance in Erik's pelvis, and watched the wet flush of his parted lips in the yellow light of the cabin.

Erik passed his tongue over them. Charles watched it disappear past the line of his teeth.

"Get out, Logan."

Erik's voice was steadier than he looked.

Though Charles refused to look in that direction, he listened as Logan got up from his chair. "Think I'm needed in the cockpit," he mumbled, before pacing evenly to the door to the flight deck. When it had shut behind him, they were alone.

Charles realized his nails were digging into the back of Erik's neck, but he refused to let go. He stared Erik in the face like a challenge, and Erik didn't back down. Instead he shifted, raising his hand away from Charles' hip. The lights dimmed further, leaving only the faint illumination of the strip lights along the floor.

There was little detail Charles could make out on his face, now.

"Like old times?" Erik asked, his voice quiet and close before Charles felt his lips again. This time it was slow, prodding, an exploration and appreciation of something neither had felt in a decade. Only it was different, of course. Charles couldn't feel Erik's stubble--he imagined it was Erik's turn, now. And they hardly knew each other anymore. Was it easier? Hadn't it been their friendship that had barred Charles from accepting it all those years ago? What did they have now to question this?

It was Erik's tongue in his mouth, now, and Charles sighed, helpless to stop his eyes from wetting again. He tipped his head, gave himself to it, and wouldn't have protested or cared if Erik had picked him up and carried him to the sofa. As it was, Erik drew Charles to follow him there, and Charles shuffled after him, rejoining him every time the movement parted them, unable to orient himself in the dark plane as well as Erik could.

Erik turned and pressed him to sit down on the sofa. In the dark he heard the creak of his belt buckle and he fumbled to help the leather through it, feeling the impatient twitching of the metal beneath his hand. _It must have been terrible for you_ , he wanted to say. To be robbed for so long of what made one strong, and individual . . .

He laughed, bitterly, before he could stop himself. Erik's hands were on his shoulders to press him down but he paused at the sound.

Boldly Charles found the glint of Erik's eyes staring down at him. "I'm hardly different than an ordinary human, now," he said. Self-destruction was a difficult habit to break. "You know that, don't you?"

Erik held his gaze. Charles imagined he saw contempt on his face, but all he really saw were shadows.

"I know what you are," Erik said. His voice was a low, forceful sound, which slipped past Charles' skin and into the core of him, gripping him firmly.

Erik pressed him down again, and Charles obeyed, on his side to the back of the sofa while Erik took the remaining strip of space at the cushion's edge. The press of his body told Charles that his balance there had metal to thank--and so did Charles, as he felt the minute shiver of the zipper on his jeans easing down and the button slipping free.

He wasn't ready for it when Erik's hand slipped down between them to cup him through the fabric of his boxers. His back arched him into the hollow of Erik's hand, heels digging into the arm of the sofa. It was a cramped and awkward space, but it may as well have been for as long as it was going to last. He was too raw, too sensitive, too aroused--emotionally, intellectually, physically--even being in the same space as Erik again.

Perhaps Erik would be no better off, Charles imagined, though for different reasons. The muscles in his side, still lean and taut despite years of confinement, tensed and startled under Charles' touch through his shirt. Charles tugged the fabric out from his trousers and savored Erik's gasp against his mouth when he traced his fingers over the lines of his ribs to his back.

Yet quickly doubt rushed in to nip at the heels of his gratification. Why had he left Erik there? Why had he never doubted the story the humans had concluded? Even in the twilight of his powers he could have contacted him, learned the truth . . . and the past ten years could have been _so, so_ different--

His face burned with shame, with regret. So much had been his fault. Burdened with near limitless potential, the blame afforded him was equally limitless. Yet he'd grown harder in the curve of Erik's palm. He licked past Erik's teeth to join their breath again and he moaned into the blanketing hum of the jet's engines. Wasn't his shame at home, here? Didn't it goad him, burn him hotter, propel him into the abyss with eyes tightly closed?

Erik's arm shifted. In the jumble of limbs Charles forced his hand down to Erik's zipper, guiding it open and letting his fingers tease at the heat that pushed through, bulging against one last layer of cotton that left nothing concealed to his fingertips. Erik's breath caught, but he was silent, as Charles was used to, as Charles found familiar. He let it drag him back ten years, to when this was new, and Erik was new, and mutanthood, as they would come to know it, was new. Where were they? Which city? Which hotel? Or Division X? Or Charles' own home? Their secret had followed them everywhere, but it was always nowhere to Charles. It was always dark, and disconnected, and inconsequential.

And a plane somewhere between the sky and the ocean, both black and seemingly infinite, certainly counted as nowhere.

Propping himself up for the leverage, Erik slipped his free hand past the waistband of Charles' boxers and gripped him. His thumb, brushing over the tip of him, stole Charles' breath as he writhed into the tight curl of his fingers, losing track of his own attempts as Erik wrenched one desperate spasm after another out of him. His hand returned to Erik's back, gripping a fistful of his shirt. His face was pressed under Erik's collarbone when he came, painfully jamming the bridge of his nose into it when his legs straightened reflexively against the arm of the sofa.

For a few seconds, he simply panted into Erik's shirt, afloat on the thudding of his heart and the distant knowledge of the plane's movement. But he didn't leave himself more time to think about it than that.

Nerves still firing, muscles still clumsy, he pushed himself up, swinging one leg over Erik and down to the floor to crouch there. His hands scrambled to unfasten the clasp of Erik's trousers and all but shoved Erik's hip down to slide him onto his back. If Erik found his actions confusing, he was at least willing to abide them.

Charles' hands slipped under the waistband of his boxers and pushed everything down far enough to expose him. Darkness hid the details, but touch guided him. He wrapped his fingers around him, rigid and hot, and bent to take his cock into his mouth.

He hadn't done this before. The quick surge of Erik's hips gagged him and he used the grip of his hand and the strength of his arm to pin Erik down to the cushions, to allow himself the moment to place himself, to find his limitations, to acquaint himself with the taste. He would never tell anyone of the men he invited onto the grounds when the students had gone and his feeling had returned. He would never admit what he'd let them do to him, and why he let them do it; how he insisted on paying them, to confine the transaction to the realm of whispers if not silence, in a dark cottage barely on his property at all. But they had taught him things, things he had sometimes spied in the minds of others, but never experienced more subjectively than that, not until loneliness and disillusionment had driven him to a madness he still sustained.

He hadn't done it before but it had been done to him, and he angled himself to rub his tongue where he liked it to be rubbed. He could hear Erik's harsh breathing over the noise of the engines and he let it encourage him, backing off enough to press his tongue over the smooth head and down again. He needed both hands now to keep Erik prone, one high on his thigh and the other still wrapped around the base of him. He knew it was torturous. Erik's hand reached for his shoulder and his fingers pressed into the muscle enough to hurt, enough to bruise. If he was signaling something, Charles didn't care. As Erik couldn't move, Charles moved for him, taking him deeper, rhythmically, to the best of his abilities, and it didn't take long.

He felt the pulse of it, and felt it hit the back of his throat. He swallowed against it, quickly, and still gagged, but saw himself through it, drawing off of Erik with little dignity but more than he could have expected.

Still breathing noisily, Erik had risen up onto his elbows. Charles looked away, down the length of the dark cabin. One hand steadied him at the edge of the cushions as he sat back on his heels; the other wiped at his mouth as he caught his breath around it.

He wanted little more than to sink down against Erik's stomach, even here kneeling on the floor, even given Erik's well-telegraphed curiosity, to recover, even to fall asleep. But unlike their old routine they were clothed, and needed to look decent, perhaps not for another few hours but certainly before they'd be ready.

When Charles rose to his feet he felt a numbness that threatened to drop him. But it was only sleeping nerves, only temporary, though out of habit he still struck at his thigh with his palm, his other hand keeping purchase on the luggage rack, sliding along as he made his way quietly toward the restroom.

He got himself into it without too much trouble or too much noise, and let necessity keep him moving, keep him from losing himself in the reflection of a man he recognized less of these days. Besides, he didn't want to see the redness in his lips, the redness in his eyes, and the light was blinding him, anyway. He washed his hands, and his face, as well as he could in the small sink. He cleaned himself up and put his clothing back in order, even ran his fingers through his hair, though not much would tame it, overgrown and uncared for for too long.

He found another washcloth and wet it with water as warm as it would get, then stepped out of the restroom and let the overhead rack lead him to Erik again, who was sitting upright on the sofa, feet on the floor, clothing already set right. Charles handed him the washcloth, and Erik took it, after a pause. Slowly, though he wasn't sure he should, Charles sat down beside him as Erik wiped his face, then scrubbed at his hands. The white cloth was the brightest color in the cabin, and was easy to follow, so Charles did, as though hypnotized.

"So," said Erik, conversationally, "when did you--"

"Don't," said Charles. "Don't say anything."

Erik laughed, if one could call it that, short and hoarse. Despite himself Charles smiled, and let his attention linger on the shadow of Erik's face a little longer than was prudent.

When Erik set the washcloth aside, Charles finally stood up. "You were supposed to be sleeping. Lie down, there's still time."

Though the plane was still dark, Charles thought he could feel Erik's eyes on him as he dutifully lay down, on his back. Like before--like he'd meant to do--Charles sat down against the sofa. He was a little less stiff now, a little less tense, but still he stayed upright, somewhat proper.

He listened as Erik sighed, a sound of reluctance, but of begrudged comfort as well. Minutes passed as Charles watched the shuttered windows across from him, grateful that they yet showed no hint around their edges of the dawn they raced toward. But surely it was coming for them, and soon. He could not have this forever. What little time they did have was eaten away by the plane's speed and direction, shortening every minute they had left.

Did Peter, he wondered, ever feel like this, but reversed, wasting precious potential waiting for the rest of the world to catch up? And did he ever feel he could have all the time in the world if only there was _one other_ like him, to share in all the extra time he had?

"What's it like for you?" asked Erik, suddenly, breaking Charles' troubled reverie. "Your treatment."

Charles drew his breath slowly, then let it out. How to describe what it was like, even if the silence was a blessing? How to describe the peculiar deafness he felt, the frustrating muteness that kept him mired in a contradictory sea of words and facial expressions, unable to see past it, unable to make himself clear in return?

He shrugged, finally. "Quiet," he said, for that was the reason above all that he continued to inject the serum. It was solitude, in every sense, that he needed, that he craved, that he suffered. His mutation, in the meantime, was gone, and he was ordinary, but it was a decision he'd made and had kept making ever since.

Erik didn't pursue it; mercifully, he didn't ask if it was worth it. Instead, after a time, Charles was certain he'd fallen asleep, though he was incapable of knowing for sure.

*****

He opened his eyes when he heard the faint click of the cockpit door opening. His back was stiff and sore, and so too was his neck, from where his head had rested against Erik's shoulder. As his eyes focused on Logan, standing in the narrow aisle bleakly lit by the dawn, he felt Erik's fingers slipping out from under his belt where he'd tucked them, arm over the edge of the sofa.

"We'll be landing soon," said Logan, his eyebrows caught between bemusement and concern as he looked between them. Charles rose unsteadily to his feet. Erik sat up, though for how long he'd been awake Charles didn't know. From what he could tell, however, when he had slept it had been peaceful. They were, after all, still here.

"I'd tell you to buckle up," Logan added to Charles, taking his own seat and fastening the seatbelt, "but I'm sure this one's got you covered."

He'd indicated Erik with a glance, and Erik grimaced back at him with humor aggressively--obviously--faked. Charles cleared his throat and turned to take the seat by the table where their chessboard still sat, bittersweetly intact. "Safety first," he said, stupidly, fastening the seatbelt.

He caught the glint of the bottle out of the corner of his eye. Without thinking he unscrewed its cap and splashed the last of it into the glass he'd left there waiting for it. Erik's eyes found him as he lifted it to his lips, but he downed it in one swallow.

"We'll need to find the hotel as soon as we land," said Logan, his tone measured. "I hope you both are ready for this."

Yet it wasn't 'both' he was really worried about. Charles didn't need his X-gene to divine that.

"Let's find out," said Charles, and it was just as well they didn't hear it.


End file.
